A veracious read sans sugarcoating

Private jet parties, designer clothes, shoes, cash and caviar on call, and champagne float through the pages of British author Celine Saintclare’s novel Sugar, Baby. But veiled in this high-end glitzy lifestyle lies the dark truth of sugar daddies, sugar babes, and all the sugaring that goes in between them. Agnes Green (21), a mixed-race woman helps her mother clean the homes of wealthy people. She aspires to become a photographer, but life seems blurred and out of focus for Agnes, who leads a hand-to-mouth existence. She has a boyfriend (Toby), a complete wastrel who is usually stoned and rarely in his senses.

A chance meeting with glamorous Emily, the daughter of one of her clients, and Agnes’s life takes a fresh turn. But all good things in life come at a cost. Emily takes Agnes under her wings and shows her how to use her good looks to entice rich folks. Men who want to have a good time with young and beautiful girls and boys. Agnes enters the complex web of sugaring and sex work. She meets artists, models, and some rich and powerful men and women. Celine’s writing is lucid. The characters are fleshed out well. The author’s eye for details stands when the sugar babies exchange tips on how to spot a wealthy man — cologne, shoes, wristwatch, and jacket. A few tell-tale signs that reek of worldly pleasures and carnal cravings in some men.

Agnes is initially happy with the easy moolah and intoxicating drug-fuelled parties. She’s jet-setting with London’s swashbuckling gentry from the sky villas of Canary Wharf to Miami’s penthouses. But in the world of sugaring, the higher your rise the lower you sink. The money is easy come, easy go. Agnes is delusional again as she does not know in which direction her life is heading. Only time will tell if Agnes will ditch her sugary lifestyle and tread alone on a road less travelled to taste sweet success.